Redshirts

The Redshirts were volunteers who followed the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and his son Ricciotti Garibaldi during campaigns in Uruguay, southern Italy, Greece, and the Balkans from the 1840s to the 1910s. The force originated as the Italian Legion of the Colorados during the Uruguayan Civil War, with Garibaldi being given red shirts destined for slaughterhouse workers. Garibaldi became the "Hero of Two Worlds" for his fighting in both Uruguay and Italy, leading his Redshirts in an invasion of Sicily in 1860 with the goal of unifying Italy under Sardinia-Piedmont. The Redshirts won several battles against the armies of the Two Sicilies and the Papal States, and they succeeded in conquering both countries and uniting them with Italy. Garibaldi's son Ricciotti led some "redshirt" volunteers that fought with the army of Greece during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and the First Balkan War. Benito Mussolini, inspired by the history of the Redshirts, would form his own fascist Blackshirts in 1923, which in turn inspired Hitler's Nazi Brownshirts.